Six Years On

12 September 2007



World Trade Center Cough Still Killing

This journal reported on the death of James Zadroga, one of the policemen who did his job so bravely that morning 6 years ago. A victim of World Trade Center Cough, Detective Zadroga’s name has been added to a bill to compensate those who didn’t die in the first minutes or hours but who are sick from the air they breathed that day and in the days that followed.

Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Vito Fossella (R-NY) have introduced the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. In the preamble to the bill, the authors say “A February 2007 report released by the City of New York revealed that 410,000 people were `heavily exposed', to the toxins of Ground Zero. The report also found that an estimated 30,000 responders are sick yet 21,000 of them do not have adequate health insurance.” The preamble also says, “The Federal program to provide medical treatments to those who responded to the September 11 aftermath, and who continue to experience health problems as a result, was finally established more than five years after the attacks, but is not adequately funded and is projected to exhaust all Federal funding before the end of fiscal year 2007.” The bill would address these and other related issues.

Absent universal healthcare, this is a vital bill that has received bipartisan support. It deserves to pass quickly, and it deserves Mr. Bush’s signature as soon as it hits his desk. Yet one is dubious of this happening. When one looks at the way veterans coming back from Iraq-Nam are cheated and mistreated by the system, it is clear that the government isn’t doing its job. When one looks at what is left of New Orleans, one knows it’s going to be a long fight to get the right thing done.

America is a land where people look forward more than they look back, and in general that is a good thing. However, it also leaves a lot of unpaid bills. How many Vietnam vets didn’t get the help they needed then, and aren’t getting it now because their war was so long ago? This year’s kindergarten class has never lived in an America that had a World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The event is rapidly becoming history.

Yesterday, New York City awoke to rain, fog and an uncomfortable warmth that clung to clothes and slicked hair to scalps. It was much different six years ago. That morning dawned bright and clear, but the skies would fill with dust and ash for lunchtime. That dust and ash is still killing. The TV and newspapers said “Remember 9/11,” but some parts are already being forgotten, like taking care of the people who worked in the Pile, who lived down there after being told it was safe, and who carried out the bodies of the dead. Passing the James Zadroga Act would be a good way to remember.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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